Deep Dish Blueberry Pie

I've been busy with my top-secret superhero missions and life has also tossed me a few squirrely balls to boot. And when I'm not dealing with all that, I'm running away from to feed my soul with a bit of this:









Or else I'm over here feeding my soul:

The 'Snout' at Arrowsmith.







Doing silly things like this:

That's me!.







Despite the summer mayhem and general chaos, along with my mini-escapes to feed my soul, I've still managed to keep on my 100 Mile Diet journey. I'm pretty much relying on cooking up a big batch of meat and veggies and mixing and matching those with salad greens to see me through several days. Having a big tupperware of boiled Vancouver Island new potatoes, a couple of loafs of bread from Flour, Water, Salt bakery and a menagerie of pickled vegetables that I canned from last year helps round off any meal.
Our latest BBQ dinner party involved a couple of gorgeous locally raised steaks from Piper's. The meat was marinated and then thrown onto the BBQ with some of the Asian BBQ sauce (nope, still not tired of that one yet) and I added a bunch of veggies from my weekly organic produce box and the farmer's market.

The steak that fed us for 3 days ;)







I sliced the steak thinly and let everyone do what they wanted with it. Some folks made themselves a big salad with the fresh greens, some roasted veggies and a few slices of meat.






I stacked meat and veggies onto a slice of baguette from Flour, Water, Salt, for jaw stretching open-faced sandwich.






The leftover meat was carried over onto other dishes including a Fast and Dirty Beef and Broccoli:
Talk about easy peasy. Since the meat was already cooked, all I had to do was stirfry up some garlic and broccoli from my produce box and throw in some leftover roasted peppers and the meat. A few glugs of soy sauce and dollop of Asian BBQ sauce and dinner was ready in less than 10 minutes.




For one of my lunches, I took some leftover potatoes, roasted veggies, some pickled beets, beet greens, fava beans and made a nice little meal. A splash of balsamic vinegar was all I used to dress it.





Of course, this is also blueberry season and one of my favorite ways to enjoy blueberries is in a fresh blueberry pie. Dudinks Gardens, Blue Harvest farms and other farms have yummy local berries for U-pick or farm gate sales. Please support your local farms! They're having a rough year with the crazy weather and the even crazier government bureaucracy. Here's a list of local farms and farmers markets.

I make a 'deep dish' berry pie because it's all about the berry filling as far as I'm concerned. I use a 9-inch springform pan (the sort you use for cheesecakes) and a filling base that uses nothing more than berries, sugar, a bit of cornstarch and lemon juice. It's worlds better than that powdered crap in the pouch. It's an super no-fuss pie to make and it showcases the fresh goodness of blueberries. If you're not in the mood to make a pie, swing by Grandma's Country Pies on 3018 Ross Road (beside Nanaimo Sausage House).

I don't add any extra sugar to my graham cracker crust since I find that the graham crackers are sweet enough on their own. The cinnamon and ginger help bring out some sweetness too. I also keep the sugar amount pretty low for the filling base since I'd rather enjoy the natural sweetness of the blueberry.

Here's my Fast & Dirty Deep Dish Blueberry Pie:

Crust:
3 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger (optional)

Combine ingredients and press firmly and evenly into the base and sides of a 9 or 10 inch springform pan. I press the crumb mixture a good couple inches up the wall of the pan so you have nice deep crust.

Bake in a preheated 350F oven for 15-20 minutes or until the edges are starting the brown.

Let cool on rack while you prepare the filling.

Filling
8 cups fresh blueberries
1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoon cornstarch mixed with 3 tablespoons of water = slurry
juice of one lemon

Take 1 1/2 cups blueberries, water, sugar and bring to a boil in a large pot, lower the heat and let simmer for a few minutes until the berries are cooked down. You want to use a pot big enough so you can later dump in the rest of the blueberries and have room to mix it. It will save you from dirtying another bowl. I mean, what would you rather do? Eat blueberry pie or do dishes??

Take filling base off the heat and add in the cornstarch slurry. Mix well.

Return the pot to the medium high heat and bring back up to a boil. Stir continuously until the mixture thickens. You want something as thick as ectoplasmic goo but not so thick that your spoon will stand up in it.

Turn off the heat and stir in the lemon juice.

Add in the rest of the blueberries and fold the base and berries together until the berries are well coated.

Dump filling into the cooked pie shell. Let it cool on rack for 15 minutes and then into the fridge for at least an hour for the filling to finish setting.
Pace around the house, sneak a few blueberries off the top of the pie. Re-arrange the berries to hide the berries that you stole off the pie. Impatiently pace around the house some more.

One good way to make the time go faster is to wander over to the store and get some vanilla ice cream to go with your pie ;)

I'm off to the Saltspring Island Natural Fibre Fest this weekend with my tribe of weaver, spinner and knitters. Have a great weekend. Go visit and farmer's market or a farm. For those that are thinking about putting together a winter veggie garden, the Community Gardens is holding a winter plant sale at 271 Pine Street on Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 2pm.

Happy Eating!

Jen

Pickled shoots & a not so secret sauce

This past week's produce box brought another bag of garlic shoots to me. Since I was still enjoying the ones from my garden and from last week's produce box, I decided to pickle this batch. Since I was going to eat them within a few weeks, I made a refrigerator pickle version to save myself the sweaty hassle of canning a couple of jars. If you're going to store them at room temperature for a while, you may want to can them. Otherwise, store them in the fridge and eat them up soon!

Here's my Fast & Dirty Garlic Shoot Pickle recipe:
Garlic shoots - well washed and cut to fit into jars
General pickling liquid:
1 cup vinegar - at lease 5% acid. I used a locally grown apple cider vinegar
1 cup water
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
*spices- whatever your imagination or pantry has to offer.

Mix together pickling liquid and bring to a boil and then down to a simmer for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, arrange shoots in clean mason jars. It's a bit of a game of Tetris but you can fit quite a few shoots in a mason jar.
Pour liquid into jars to cover the shoots. Cover with lid and let stand at room temperature until cooled a bit. Move to refrigerator.
Let it marinate for at least a week before cracking open.

*For spices I used a mix of coriander seeds, cumin seeds, fennel seeds and szechuan peppercorns in one. For the other I threw in some dill seeds and red pepper flakes. You can add the seeds straight into the liquid and let it cook up with the vinegar or simply pop them into the jar with the shoots. It's up to you.

I've been busy gorging on this summer weather. In the last few weeks, I managed to run away for a paddle in the Discovery Islands off of Victoria and most recently, a nice afternoon of rompy waves in the Winchelsea Island off of Lantzville with a couple of good friends.

With the hot weather, I do my best to spend as little time cooped up in my kitchen. I'd rather 'assemble' dinner than cook it, especially since my kitchen gets blistering hot by late afternoon. Usually I don't start thinking about dinner until it gets cooler and darker. By that time, it's after 9pm and all I want to do is put my feet up or do some spinning or knitting. But I still want good, local eats!

My usual hot weather cooking MO is to cook up a batch of meat and veggies, usually on the BBQ, to see us through the week. I also make up a couple of different dressings that can also do double duty as a marinade or sauce. From there I simply mix and match salads fixings and top it with a bit of meat. Since it's still new potato season, I usually boil up or bbq up a huge batch of potatoes. A loaf or two of breads from one of the local artisan bakers and we're set!

I've had a couple 100 mile diet BBQ dinners these past few week. Besides local meat, there are plenty of local vegetables and even fruit that find their way onto the grill. I have one of those BBQ pizza pans that make grilling vegetables a breeze and save me the hassle of threading them onto skewers. They don't need anything more than a drizzle of oil before being popped onto the pan and over a medium heat. Make sure they're arranged in a single layer or else they won't cook evening. If you want to get fancy, marinate them in a vinaigrette for 20 minutes before cooking or sprinkle on a spice rub.

For my meats, I've concocted a Fast and Dirty BBQ sauce that is reminiscent of chinese BBQ pork and duck. A sweet, soy sauce based recipe that can be used as a BBQ sauce, a marinate or stir dry sauce. It's a nice alternative to pre-made bottle sauces that have ingredients that I can't pronounce. Though, it is still made up of other jarred and bottle ingredients, at least I can pronounce them. I can even spell some of them ;)

For the sweet and spicy base of the sauce, I use homemade red pepper jelly that I made last year with locally grown hot peppers and locally grown apple cider vinegar. It's easy to make and it's a great condiment to have on hand. Or you can pick one up from Golden Maples Farm , who make a huge range of awesome jellies. They can be found at the farmer's markets and various good events. They use their own locally grown produce to make their tasty condiments.

BTW, I find that sometimes the jelly will crystalize but a quick trip through the nukebox fixed that.

Here's my Fast & Dirty Chinese BBQ sauce
2/3 cup red pepper jelly
1/3 cup soy sauce
1 thumb of ginger grated
1 teaspoon sesame seed oil

Mix thoroughly and use as needed.

So far I've used it on chicken in two ways:
Roasted chicken (from Cedar Valley Poultry). I roasted the chicken with a couple spoonfuls of the sauce in the cavity. About 20 minutes before it's done, I brushed the sauce on liberally all over the chicken. I brushed on a second coat once the chicken was done. I had some sauce on the side. It was a zingy version of traditional chinese bbq chicken.




BBQ chicken strips: I marinated a bunch of thinly sliced chicken breasts for 20 minutes then grilled them. I brushed some more sauce on once the chicken was done and served some sauce on the side.



At my last BBQ dinner, I marinated a locally raised flank steak in some of the sauce and then grilled it. Again, I waited until the steak was done before brushing on more sauce:
Chinese bbq steak with locally grown vegetables.








The flank steak was served along with more roasted local veggies, some from my produce box and some from my garden and a huge link of sausage from the Nanaimo Sausage House. It was plenty to feed my dinner guests and the usual unannounced dinner guests (it's hard to not attract hungry bellies when the wind is carrying the smell of yummy food all the way down the street I guess). I still managed to hold onto some leftover meat, greens, blanched snap peas and made a nice salad the next day for lunch. I made a vinaigrette with one part bbq sauce and 1 part rice vinegar.
That dinner ended with a luscious fresh strawberry pie from Grandma's Country Pies, a gem of a pie shop right beside the Nanaimo Sausage House. The strawberries were from Dudink's Gardens. A sweet end to a great 100 mile diet meal!









Last night's meal was leftovers from the flank steak above, with sugar peas and garlic shoots from the garden stir fried with Chinese BBQ sauce and some shrimp noodles. Done in under 10 minutes!


Have a tasty week & happy eating everyone!

Jen

Nanaimo's 100 Mile Diet Challenge

Good-bye asparagus, Hello strawberries!

What’s today? Sunday? Tuesday?! How did it get to be Tuesday?

What do you mean it’s already June?

You're kidding me. Excuse me, I've gotta go throw my tomato plants outside.

(first fruits of my tomato plants)

Thank goodness I made a quick stop to the farmer’s market over the weekend. It’s coming to the end of the local asparagus season. I know. It was way too short. If I had blinked once more I would have totally missed it. But look at the bright side, it’s now the beginning of the local strawberry season!
(asparagus, strawberries and golden beets from farmer's market.)

Yippee! You can take your tasteless Cali-styrofoam-a strawberries and stuff it. These local gems are worth the wait. They're deep red and juicy through and through with just enough tang and a whole lot of flavor.

according to the paper, local berry farms are also opening up their gates for the season. Dudink's Gardens has freshly picked strawberries for sale from 1pm to 5pm daily. They're at 2219 Gomerich Road (off of Minetown) at the south end of Nanaimo. Many other local farms are also offering their a spring bounty of goods.

We celebrated another seasonal milestone this past weekend - the first BBQ of the year. Now, technically, there’s no reason why I can’t BBQ throughout the fall and winter around here other than I’m a total whiny wuss when I’m not in the mountains or buckled into a kayak. Well, sometimes even then I can be a whiny wuss too…

Though I have thought about cracking open the BBQ mid-January, especially when we get one of those mild spells, it's still pretty dark and cold after 5pm. It is still winter and I would much rather throw a stew into the crockpot or roast up some veggies and chicken in the oven than stand over a BBQ in my down jacket and toque.

So, I meticulously went through the whole dish soap gas leak testing procedure to make sure I don’t burn down the house. Though it’s a pretty new BBQ and there’s no reason for failure, it’s always a bit unnerving to be testing for gas leaks. That first lighting of the BBQ is always seasoned with a pinch of trepidation for me.

For the first BBQ of the season, I pulled out a couple of lamb chops from the freezer package that I got from Horizon Heritage farms last fall. I’ve been saving these babies for some good old fashion open fire cooking. I also threw on a bunch of sausages, locally raised meat of course, so we’d have enough to see up through a busy weekend.
I also threw a bunch of locally grown veggies onto the BBQ. I got one of those pizza BBQ grill pan thingamabobbidies. It’s basically a round sheet of metal with holes and a handle. It’s perfect for lazy buggers like me that don’t want to bother threading their veggies on a skewer. I simply lay them out in a single layer on the grill pan over medium heat and let the fire do it’s magic.

Both the lamb and the veggies got a simple treatment of olive oil, salt and pepper. I heated the grill on medium high and threw the lamb on for 4-5 minutes each side. Don’t mess with it while it’s cooking. Just leave it alone to do it’s thing. Some leftover spaghetti squash and a dollop of parsley pesto finished off the meal.

The lamb chops were gorgeously rich and meaty. Even DH, who is usually 'meh' about lamb, was smacking his lips and waxing poetic. The little selfish muggle in me was hoping he wouldn't like it so I could have it all to myself :p

On Sunday, we were already sick of the heat and headed up to Mt. Cokely to romp about for the day. It was the perfect day of mountain adventuring and exploring. Red columbine was blooming along the road and the air was alive with bugs. Lots and lots of little biting, carnivorous bugs and we then remembered why we should have worn long sleeved shirts and long pants.
We got home late as usual. Sore and bug tortured, but happy, I was grateful that I had leftover BBQ sausages, veggies and other tasty bits that made for a bowl of leftover bliss in less than 10 minutes

Sauteed asparagus and local boerwurst sausage along with organic spelt, roasted veggies and parsley pesto (yes I love this stuff). Except for the grain which is from the BC mainland, everything was island grown and raised.

BTW, I’ve happy to announce that Nesvog Butcher in Terminal Park Mall along the Island Hwy, is now offering local beef and cheese, along with local free-range eggs and other tasty tidbits.

This coming week (I guess that's now, eh) is another non-stop week. I’ve got a Spinner & Weaver’s Guild potluck (no, I don’t know what I’m making for that yet), a meeting with a reporter from the Bulletin about the 100 mile diet (yippee!), a standing date for some kayaking, a couple of knitting lessons, farm stuff, a dinner party on Friday and a new bushel of 100 mile fleece to card and spin. I'm tired just thinking about it.

Have a great week!

Jen

Nanaimo 100 Mile Diet Challenge

Meat & Potatoes - 100 Mile Style

Kevin had some work thing to do last night so I needed something I could make for myself and then serve to him with minimal fuss. I looked at what I had and figured I would do a grilled veggie salad and some charred flesh on the bbq and more of those yummy Peruvian purple potatoes I picked up from Duncan.

I grabbed some buffalo from Piper's Meats on Bowen Road. They have a cut of buffalo marked 'mock tender'. It's cut in steak form and had a ‘Perfect for BBQ’ sticker on it. That’s all I needed to know. It looked super-lean so I marinated it once I got home. When I say I marinated it, I mean, I threw it in a bowl and squirted some already made vinaigrette onto it and let it sit in the fridge until cooking. I often keep a vinaigrette in a plastic squirt bottle on the counter. It’s a great flavour enhancer for the obvious things like salads but also as a last minute flavour burst for pasta, soups, stews and even as a quick sauce for a otherwise plain piece of flesh. As mentioned, I also use it as a marinate for veggies and flesh. I still have some of that blueberry vinaigrette I made the other night. I used one part Marley Farm’s blueberry vinegar to one part olive oil, a smidgen of Dijon mustard. If you want, you can dump in some dried herbs and a clove of crushed garlic.

I also grilled up a bunch of corn, yellow peppers and red onion. The corn I started in the microwave. I shucked them and tossed them into a large microwave safe bowl along with enough water to cover the bottom of the bowl and nuked it for 6 mins on high. I left it in the microwave for a few extra minutes after it was done being nuked. The peppers and onions I chopped into quarters and threaded onto some skewers and doused with a few squirts of the marinate. The potatoes I simply boiled-up while I BBQed.

With the BBQ all preheated, I turned the heat on both sides to medium high and plopped my meat and veggies onto the grill. The buffalo needed about 5-6 mins on each side. They were cut about 2 inches thick. I just rotated the veggies every 3 or so mins so all the sides got some grilling.

I let the buffalo rest in a bowl, covered with a pot lid and assembled my grilled veggie salad. I cut the kernels of the corn cob and chopped the other stuff into bite sized pieces. I also threw in some leftover blanched green beens, cooked kamut wheat and freshly chopped parsley. With a few more squirts of vinaigrette and pinch of salt and freshly ground pepper. I now have enough grilled veggie salad to last me until the end of the week. It’s great on it’s own. I have also used it as stuffing for egg dishes (omelettes, fritatta etc), thrown with some pasta, stuffing into a baked squash, stir-fried with rice, tossed into a soup or pilaf.

To make it a complete protein vegetarian dish from this salad just toss in some beans. I haven’t been able to find locally grown chickpeas or other beans for sale at the stores but Saltspring Seeds is selling chickpea seeds for home gardens. They also sell a great range of soybeans. Locally grown fresh soybeans, or edamame, can also be found. I found some a farmers markets over the summer. Saltspring Seeds website offers some great info and advice on growing these.

Back to dinner. Once I assembled the salad, I sliced the buffalo steak into thin slices. I do this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it makes the steak seem much more tender. And even so, buffalo is such a naturally lean meat, it benefits from being served this way. Secondly, it looks like a whole lot more meat than it really is. I’m all for eating flesh. I just don’t think we need a whole slab of beast on the plate. There are enviromental and simple food budget issues that have led me to this conclusion. I'd rather spend my money on buying smaller cuts of higher quality, more sustainable , ethicially raised beasts. Kevin, who is genetically predisposed to being a carnivore (or so he tells me) hasn’t noticed that I’ve whittled down the meat portions to a few ounces per day on average. Don’t you dare tell him! (I actually split the meat shown in the photo above between me and Kevin. The rest I used in a fast & dirty soup for lunch the next day).

As you can see, I cooked the buffalo rare/medium rare. I prefer my grilled beast this way, especially for buffalo. I find that once you get past the medium range the meat gets tough and dry and simply not good eats.

The light shavings that you see beside the meat is freshly grated wasabi from the Hazelmere Farm. It provided a good shot of horseradish heat to the rich buffalo steak. The potatoes really are that purple. So pretty. They’re a lighter purple inside but still, very purple. The flesh is fluffy and high in starch like a russet. It would certainly make some cool mashed potatoes.

Dinner took less tha 20 mins to prepare. I got dinner for the two of us, a grilled veggie salad to last us for the rest of the week and some leftover beast that made for a yummy lunch today. The only ingredients that weren't grown within 100 miles were salt, pepper, olive oil and the kamut. The kamut is organic and I got it from True Grains bakery in Cowichan Bay. I'm waiting to hear back from the head baker there about where he's getting his kamut and other grains from.

BTW, Pipers Meats is taking orders for local turkeys for Thanksgiving. They’re coming from a farm just a couple miles away or from Gabriola Island. The turkeys will be coming in the Wednesday before the Thanksgiving. Of course, they also have a bunch of other locally grown beasts that you can roast up for the big holiday.

That’s it for now. I’m heading down to Ladysmith for the Happy Turkey Night at the Yellowpoint Cranberry farm tonight. I can’t wait! I’ve got to clean-out the freezer and make room for a load of cranberries.

Happy Eating!

Jen

www.100miledietnanaimo.com